"The ZigBee Alliance is helping to move energy harvesting from specialized industrial and building automation applications to a significantly broader range of new consumer and commercial markets that make use of the global 2.4 GHz frequency band," said Mark Walters, Vice President of Strategic Development, ZigBee Alliance. "In addition to updating Light + Building attendees on our collaboration with the EnOcean Alliance to significantly expand global energy harvesting opportunities, we will also share the latest news about the growing momentum behind our ZigBee 3.0 solution."
These and other products from Bega, Centralite, Feibit and Legrand will also be part of a device interoperability display produced by Alliance member DSR Corporation's IoTicity portfolio of services and products. DSR's ZigBee-based stack, cloud and mobile apps, utilities and tools provide a complete solution set for ZigBee-certified applications development. The ZigBee Alliance, a non-profit association of companies creating, maintaining and delivering open, global standards for the low-power wireless Internet of Things (IoT), today announced it will be joined by 60 member companies at the Light + Building 2016 conference. In both the ZigBee Alliance booth (Hall 9.0, Booth C89) and their own presence throughout the conference, ZigBee Alliance members will be showcasing a broad range of interoperable solutions for home and building automation and lighting. The ZigBee Alliance will also highlight its ZigBee 3.0 solution that unifies the IoT through standardization and interoperability at all layers of the network, and will soon bring the most widely deployed energy-harvesting technology to the 2.4 GHz global consumer frequency band through a collaboration with the EnOcean Alliance. Featured products within the ZigBee Alliance booth will include: Murata: Murata will show its latest modules based on ZigBee-based technology that enable wireless smart lighting systems to provide comfort and energy savings. They'll also present the Murata mini-gateway (SHGC200), one of the smallest gateway systems in the world for home and smart building automation, running embedded Linux with WLAN, Ethernet and ZigBee Alliance standards capabilities. Jiuzhou Greeble: Greeble will show affordable and reliable ZigBee-based lighting products designed for consumers, and demonstrate how they work in a smart home application. MMB Networks: MMB will showcase its family of ZigBee-based hardware, including wireless modules, bridges, gateways, and lighting-specific solutions, all powered by MMB's RapidConnect interoperability software. RapidConnect is an embedded application that simplifies product development, dramatically reduces time-to-market, and gives IoT devices robust, real-world networking with interoperability across major commercial, lighting and connected home platforms. Philips: Philips Lighting will demonstrate its ZigBee Light Link certified interoperable connected lighting solutions by means of the Hue personal wireless lighting system. In addition, they will show universal dimmers, dual-channel switch actuators and window blind controllers-- all equipped with built-in metering and fully supporting ZigBee Green Power in a mixed setup with third-party ZigBee-based products. In support of the ZigBee Alliance and EnOcean Alliance liaison, ubisys will demonstrate EnOcean's energy-harvesting switches controlling ubisys ZigBee devices. GreenPeak Technologies: The company will show its GP651 IoT connectivity solution designed specifically for LED lighting technologies. The inexpensive, small-footprint solution supports LED lights with up to 4 color channels, across a range of different wireless IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee Alliance connectivity protocols. Digi International: The company will show its newly updated ZigBee through-hole module, award-winning XBee ® ZigBee Cloud Kit, and newly released XBee ZigBee Mesh Kit.
EnerBee: The company's ground-breaking micro generator uses the power of motion to eliminate batteries in consumer and industrial smart objects. EnerBee aims to commercialize its first product at the end of 2016-- a wireless and battery-less dimmer for the mainstream market that uses ZigBee 3.0 technology and can be implemented with a wide range of smart light bulbs and solutions. Because existing ZigBee Home Automation and ZigBee Light Link standards for smart homes and buildings are forward compatible with ZigBee 3.0, there are already several hundred certified devices that are immediately part of the ZigBee 3.0 ecosystem. Many of these will be on display from Light + Building. The ZigBee Alliance, a non-profit association of companies creating, maintaining and delivering open, global standards for the low-power wireless Internet of Things (IoT), today announced it will be joined by 60 member companies at the Light + Building 2016 conference. In both the ZigBee Alliance booth (Hall 9.0, Booth C89) and their own presence throughout the conference, ZigBee Alliance members will be showcasing a broad range of interoperable solutions for home and building automation and lighting. The ZigBee Alliance will also highlight its ZigBee 3.0 solution that unifies the IoT through standardization and interoperability at all layers of the network, and will soon bring the most widely deployed energy-harvesting technology to the 2.4 GHz global consumer frequency band through a collaboration with the EnOcean Alliance. In support of the ZigBee Alliance and EnOcean Alliance liaison, ubisys will demonstrate EnOcean's energy-harvesting switches controlling ubisys ZigBee devices. Read more at Wireless Design & Development.
In order for a city to provide access to its intelligence behind the knowledge and become a Smart City, the development of the Intelligence System that connects the central nervous system to a brain is required-- enter smart buildings. The focus on Big Data and your city's behavior towards its data's management is a critical element towards being a truly Smart City. The building blocks to effectively and efficiently use city data will ultimately reside in a city's ability to repurpose its existing documents and data associated with the Built Environment, which is the authenticated digital DNA of all cities. Without proper digital DNA structure and management, the connectivity from your city's nervous system to the brain will be problematic, inhibiting performance and the evolution of your city to a Smart City. Each city has its own cardiovascular system (traffic, mass transit), skeletal system (infrastructure), digestive and respiratory systems (energy, waste) and even a primitive nervous system (telecommunications). In order for a city to provide access to its intelligence behind the knowledge and become a Smart City, the development of the Intelligence System that connects the central nervous system to a brain is required-- enter smart buildings. The issue is not if the city has the proper data to become a Smart City, the issue is how. The job of today's cities IT department is not to just secure people from getting into a city's system, but how to manage the glut and control of data that will be trying to get out. The cities that solve this issue will be on the correct path to being a Smart City. The focus on Big Data and your city's behavior towards its data's management is a critical element towards being a truly Smart City. A smarter, efficient city that would encompass aspects of intelligent transportation, security, energy management, CO2 emissions, and sustainability is contingent on the implementation of a Big Data strategic plan to enable decision makers and authorities to perform their jobs. In response, some cities have taken an Open Data approach to assist in making its data available to the general public, which has spawned an emerging market for the development and sale of "Apps" to enable this Open Data to come alive and provide value to a user.
A Smart City and the Smart Buildings therein are not a marketing campaign, slick sales technique nor an amusing political catch phrase. It is a series of solutions to an urgent and serious situation the world faces today. Smart Cities are emerging as a civic action due to a "perfect storm" of the convergence of market conditions, technology innovation, social wants, government needs and the migration to urban environments that has accelerated on a global scale which dwarfs any previous mass movement of people in history. One striking example is found in a report by McKinsey & Co. in 2009 that stated 350 million people in China would move to cities throughout China by 2025. Existing Chinese cities, already overpopulated and struggling to maintain public services, are bracing for this onslaught of humanity by preparing, planning and implementing large scale urban projects, designed to transform from industrial urban environments to Smart Cities with smart buildings. At the core, Smart City solutions, both small and large, have an opportunity to assist in creating an environment for people to prosper in a welcoming, inclusive and open manner. A Smart City's success will only be measured by how well its inhabitant's quality of life improves. A path to enabling your city's digital DNA comes from the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and the data captured by Smart Buildings. BIM and Smart Buildings provide the digital DNA that when put into the context of a district, neighborhood and city , provides a city relevant, authenticated data.
"Smart Cities" is a term for a series of solutions to the problems that come along with the mass movement of people to urban environments i.e.: the lack of resources, infrastructure, public safety, transportation and so on. At the core of smart cities are Smart Buildings that does not only increase tenant safety and satisfaction, energy and operational efficiency, but also act as a smart city server, providing digital DNA of a neighborhood, district, city and other relevant and authenticated data. BIM and Smart Buildings provide the digital DNA that when put into the context of a city, neighborhood and district , provides a city relevant, authenticated data. The building blocks to effectively and efficiently use city data will ultimately reside in a city's ability to purpose its existing documents and data associated with the Built Environment, which is the authenticated digital DNA of all cities. Without proper digital DNA structure and management, the connectivity from your city's nervous system to the brain will be problematic, inhibiting performance and the evolution of your city to a Smart City. When this individual building data is connected to the City Network, potentially through an Open Data policy, interesting things begin to happen. The captured AEC data that a city already possesses becomes the digital DNA of Smart Cities. Smart City definition frameworks are being designed and marketed by academics, companies, urban associations and the media, as well as the use of technologies like smart buildings. Through this cacophony of frameworks, a foundation has emerged that help define areas of Smart City interest, action and measures. These same frameworks provide the definition of 10 Smart City elements:
Infrastructure.
Transportation.
Green Buildings.
Energy.
Waste.
Education.
Healthcare.
Public Safety.
Water.
Citizen Services.
The interesting thing about Smart City initiatives is the closely integrated way that seemingly disparate elements work together. As cities begin their transformative process into Smart Cities, it helps to consider the manner in which cities will need to address the social, economic, engineering and environmental challenges. And this manner will center on Knowledge.
